Presumably, we are writing nodes we feel deserve to be voted up. If one of yours is voted down, and you carefully and exhaustively review the node and still feel the judgement is unfair, There's nothing you can do about it but feel superior. Why superior? Because you have better taste, better sense, better noder skills than whomever that schmuck was. Ok, well, the other option is to complain. And if you complain, you lose all right to feel superior. That's right, kids. You heard it here first.

We have almost no power over how people will vote, and the power that we do hold is in our eloquence and erudition as played out in our nodes, not our whingingprowess. I can say from experience that people who constantly whine in the Chatterbox make my downvote finger itch. Not that i would, understand, but i could... We're here to build a database, not gather XP. If we can't influence the voters, we shouldn't allow them to excite our passions.
If you're not having fun, you're not noding right. Node what you want to node, not what you think people want you to node. So please: be unmoved by cools or votes. Be moved by the people who pour themselves into E2 daily. I mean, after all, it's not as if you're going to get a framed certificate and a million dollars when you reach the next level. Just a new title. And maybe a spaceship.

i would like to give co-writing credit to yossarian, who was there for me, man, and to Marcus Aurelius, who did it first and better.

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XP Stoicism is a nice idea in theory, but in practice, I really don't think it works on every level. The General synopsis of this node would have to be 'we don't have to sanitize our ideas' -- it's a very good position. The problem is, due to people being human, it fails sometimes in its execution.

It's easy to say 'fuck reputation' when you're a level 9, because by then you have so many people already backing you that anyone disagreeing with you is in the minority. Chances are, people already respect you because of your level and the length of time you've been here. But it's a completely different story for the new user who joined last month. A new, inept user doesn't have the option of ignoring reputation because the whole user structure (not E2 itself, mind you) is based on level, which is in part based on XP.

I had the good fortune of becomming a part of the community long before E2 came around (we were still everything.blockstackers.com back then), and so there was no such thing as XP or C! as we know them today. So by the time I migrated to E2, I was already off the bottom rung and I didn't have to worry a whole lot. But for a new user, they will be judged mostly by their XP, and then by their number of writeups. We must never forget how hard it was for us in the begining.

It should only hurt if you concede that every single person on E2 is smarter, wiser and cooler than you--then you could be sure that every vote for or against you comes from a position of authority. Mostly, though, votes come from people who are much like you; they know more about this, less about that, and may be in any sort of mood today from postcoital bliss to bitter, vengeful rage.